Intel made nice video tutorial how to use OpenOCD and our JTAGs with their SoCs! This explains the frequent purchases they do from many Intel locations all around the world of ARM-USB-TINY-H , ARM-USB-OCD-H and ARM-JTAG-20-10.

Intel write recommended price for tray $20 in their site, but brief check shows that it could be sourced from China at less than $15. Much better deal than the obsolete iMX6 quad core SoC for instance! Still x3 times more expensive than Allwinner A64 but probably x10 times more powerful.

Pro:

first class SOC vendor 14 nm process;

well documented;

nice features;

removes the cumbersome ARM obsolete Android Linux Kernels problems;

you can work with the latest vanilla Linux Kernel;

we guess Graphics and Video drivers are also mainlined;

can run Linux, Windows, Android whatever you want;

can be build to work with standard 64bit computer memory modules, so you can put whatever amount of RAM you want up to 4GB;

Con:

probably more power hungry than ARM, but maybe not, the tablet I was looking at was with 4000mAh battery

2014 is almost gone, New Year is coming and we will start the year with three Workshops on January 10th.

Update your agenda: Starting from 14.00 o’clock on 10th of January in Olimex Training Building there will be three interesting workshops.

First Workshop will be about Intel vs ARM. Minnowboard MAX will be compared to OLinuXino and RK3188-SOM-EVB in terms of productivity, power consumption, Linux support, etc.

Second Workshop will present ESP8266 and RT5350 OSHW boards for IoT applications.

Third Workshop will be about SMT technology, type of components, how to design PCBs for SMT, what is solder paste, how to handle solder paste, how to design stencil for solder paste, how to print solder paste, reflow profiles, how to make profile and how to trouble shoot problems with SMT technology like printing, soldering etc. There will be practical demonstrations and will be shared know-how captured for the 23+ years of experience with electronics manufacturing which cost gold 🙂

One month ago I wrote about the Intel plans to penetrate the tablet market with their new quad core Bay Trail SoC. The ambitions were Intel to release low cost $5 chip which to compete with the ARM based Allwinner and Rockchip SOCs which dominate the low cost tablet market.

We all were wondering how this could happen as Intel design and production is focused on the expensive and powerful desktop/server processors which sells for $30-1000.

Now we know how this will be achieved 🙂 from this Press release. Intel has signed strategic Agreement with Rockchip to accelerate the Intel based solutions in Tablet market.

What does this means? Intel will licensee x86 Silvermount architecture to Rockchip and Intel’s 3G/LTE know how, so Rockchip will be able to design their own chips based on Intel’s architecture.

The first new chips will be available in 2015. This is very interesting move from Intel to penetrate the tablet market which was exclusively held by ARM devices.

“Prices of Intel’s mainstream quad-core tablet CPUs have dropped to below US$5, which are almost on par with those offered by China-based chipset suppliers such as Rockchip Electronics and Allwinner Technology and even below those available from Nvidia, Qualcomm and MediaTek”

Intel aims to ship 40 million tablet CPUs in 2014, including entry-level Bay Trail family and SoFIA 3G platform products.

Arduino with its over 1 million sold development boards is acting as magneto for marketing managers in all semi companies.

We already review the incredible engineering done by NXP on this subject to make Adruino compatible low cost 8-bit processor without ADC and enough GPIOs, and while we though nobody can come up with something so incredible non-sense.

For decades Intel have been few years ahead of the competition. They always had semiconductor process which is two nodes before rest in the industry, but with the decline of Desktops and the rise of the mobile devices this is about to change.

Intel announced their first SoC based on 14nm will be available in the first half of 2015, Samsung is preparing to do the same, they have signed with Apple to manufacture their new iPhone7 SoC on 14nm first half of 2015.